Creating a New England style IPA with the Recipe Creator on the Brewie

1 4 months ago

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This article accompanies a video on the above topic and includes the recipe details (for reference), and some added details on conditioning your water for best results. Please see the video for step-by-step details using Brewie’s recipe creator. Also see my article on hop whirl-pooling on the Brewie as this technique is used for this recipe.

Recipe SummaryGrain Bill:5.44kg (12lb) Canadian two-row pale malt340g (12oz) Crystal Malt (15L)340g (12oz) Torrified Wheat340g (12oz) Turbinado Sugar (to be placed in hop cage 2, for use during the boil)Amounts of wheat and two-row pale malt could be adjusted (i.e. remove 500g of pale malt and add 500g of wheat), to play with the flavour profile and haziness level. One could also consider tweaking the amount of sugar added to move your ABV up or down based on preference or efficiency factors.

Water Profile TipsThe way hop flavours and bitterness levels are perceived can be impacted by the mineral content of the water you use to mash and sparge. A profile I’ve used for this style is:275ppm Calcium40ppm Magnesium25ppm Sodium610ppm Sulfate35ppm Chloride270ppm BicarbonateOne way to get close to this profile is to use distilled or reverse osmosis water and make the following additions:In your mash water, while Brewie is heating it (15.3L water volume used for this recipe):20g Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate)0.8g Salt (Sodium Chloride)Dissolve and stir as water is being heated in the boil tank before it is transferred over to the mash tank.Sparge water (12.8L volume used for this recipe):16g Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate)0.6g Salt (Sodium Chloride)Dissolve and stir as sparge water is being heated in the boil tank before sparging begins.

Depending on your local tap water profile, you may be able to achieve the target profile by slightly adjusting the above additions. In my case, my tap water has fairly low mineral content, except for bicarbonates. This causes mash pH to become too alkaline. In my case, I add a little bit of lactic acid (88% solution) to both the mash water and sparge water. Be simply adding less than 0.5mL in both mash and sparge water, it helps to acidify the mash pH slightly and maintain good efficiencies from your brewing. I add the above additions at the same time as adding the lactic acid for both mash and sparge water.